President Donald Trump said Friday he wants a coronavirus vaccine developed and produced by the end of the year. He announced a new init...
President Donald Trump said Friday he wants a coronavirus vaccine developed and produced by the end of the year.
He announced a new initiative, Operation Warp Speed, to make that happen.
'Its objective is to finish developing and then to manufacture and distribute a proven coronavirus vaccine as fast as possible. Again, we would love to see if we can do it prior to the end of the year,' the president said during the announcement in the White House Rose Garden.
'We think we are going to have some very good results coming out very quickly. In addition, it will continue accelerating the development of diagnostics and breakthrough therapies,' he added.
President Donald Trump said Friday he wants a coronavirus vaccine developed and produced by the end of the year
Moncef Slaoui will head Operation Warp Speed and said the team will do 'utmost to deliveries objectives'
Gen. Gustave F. Perna, a four-star general, will help with the logistics of delivering the vaccine once one is developed and produced
But vaccines can take between 12-18 months to develop and test. Trump shrugged off that time frame, noting the work has been ongoing since January.
'They literally are working 24 hours a day. So we've got the time, and we hope to be able to do something by the end of the year or shortly thereafter,' he said.
He repeated his argument that some viruses never have a vaccine but fade away on their own.
'Again, it's not solely vaccine-based. Other things have never had a vaccine and they go away. So, I don't want people to think this is all dependent on vaccine, but a vaccine would be a tremendous thing,' Trump said.
But the former pharmaceutical chief picked to run Operation Warp Speed acknowledged it will be difficult to come up with a coronavirus vaccine by year's end.
Moncef Slaoui, a former chairman of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, who will serve in a volunteer capacity, told The New York Times his time frame on finding a vaccine is more in line with one touted by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
'Frankly, 12-18 months is already a very aggressive timeline,' Slaoui said. 'I don't think Dr. Fauci was wrong.'
Trump formally announced Slaoui's appointment at the Rose Garden event and the former CEO was careful not to make any promises, saying the team will do their 'utmost to deliveries objectives.'
'The Operation Warp Speed objectives are very clear. The president has described them. I believe they are very credible,' Slaoui said. 'I also believe they are extremely challenging.'
'We will be able and will do the utmost to deliveries objectives,' he added.
The tone of the event was upbeat with officials echoing the president's time table on the vaccine.
'Winning matters, and we will deliver by the end of this year a vaccine, at scale, to treat the American people,' said Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The military will be deployed to deliver the vaccine once it is developed and tested.
'We will deliver, we will win this fight,' Esper said.
President Donald Trump announced the vaccine effort with some officials wearing marks and others not wearing them
President Donald Trump flanked by Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci in masks
Moncef Slaoui is volunteering to lead Operation Warp Speed
Dr. Anthony Fauci was at the Rose Garden event on Friday, wearing a face mask, but he didn't speak
Fauci told senators on Tuesday that scientists aim to know if a successful coronavirus vaccine has been found by 'late fall and early winter.
He noted scientists are already testing possible vaccines in a phase one clinical trial with an eye of going to phase two this summer.
'If we are successful, we hope to know that in the late fall and early winter,' he said.
Fauci was at the Rose Garden event on Friday, wearing a face mask, but he didn't speak. He stood behind President Trump in silence during the announcement.
Any coronavirus vaccine would have to go through clinical trials before it is approved and produced.
Trump said Thursday he would deploy the military to distribute the vaccine.
'We're mobilizing our military and other forces, but we're mobilizing our military on the basis that we do have a vaccine,' the president said in an interview with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo.
'You know, it's a massive job to give this vaccine. Our military is now being mobilized so at the end of the year we're going to be able to give it to a lot of people very, very rapidly,' he noted.
In addition to Slaoui's appointment Trump announced that of Gen. Gustave F. Perna, a four-star general who will serve as the chief operating officer.
'It will be historic as we execute the mission that's been given to us. I also feel very confident that the team will be able to provide the results as directed,' Perna said at the Rose Garden announcement.
'This mission is about defeating the enemy. We will defeat the enemy. Why? Because winning matters,' he added.
The goal of Operation Warp Speed is to have 300 million doses of a vaccine ready to be delivered by January 2021, a race to find, test and produce a cure at a speed many scientists question as too fast.
Slaoui and Perna will work out of the Department of Health and Human Services. Secretary Alex Azar developed Operation Warp Speed at Trump's request.
Azar said 'huge multi-hundred million dollar bets' would be placed on vaccine candidates in the race to find a cure for the coronavirus.
'We've got over 100 vaccine candidates that have been discovered,' Azar told Fox Business Network on Friday. 'What we're doing now is we're narrowing those down to the core group that we're going to place huge multi-hundred million dollar bets on and scale massive vaccine domestic production so that we by the end of the year, we hope, would have one or more safe and effective vaccines and hundreds of millions of doses.'
Slaoui told The Times he spoke with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Dr. Deborah Birx, who coordinates the coronavirus task force, before taking the position.
Vaccines can take between 12-18 months to develop and test; Lab techs in China work on an experimental vaccine for the coronavirus
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said 'huge multi-hundred million dollar bets' would be placed on vaccine candidates in the race to find a cure for the coronavirus
Guests at the Operation Warp Speed announcement were spaced out
Perna runs the Army's complex supply chain and told the newspaper he was asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to help run the manufacturing logistics related to the vaccine development.
He said he had been preparing to retire on July 1 after 37 years of active duty, but agreed to this final role, echoing the president's words of being 'at war' with the coronavirus.
'I believe that we're at war with this virus, and when you're at war, then you have to win,' he said.
Slaoui left GlaxoSmithKline in 2017 and worked as a venture capitalist. While at GlaxoSmithKline he oversaw the development of several vaccines.
But he has ties to pharmaceutical companies researching a coronavirus cure, Politico reported. GlaxoSmithKline is working with Sanofi to develop one and Slaoui sits on the board of Moderna, which is also working on one.
Slaoui told The Times that he told Moderna he was going to retire from its board and he suggested that he was divesting his equity in GlaxoSmithKline.
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